Catch-Up

First off, let me apologize for not writing in quite a while.  As one can imagine in the past two-three weeks quite a bit has happened.  We had a week off from the course so Elizabeth and I headed to the big city with our dear neighbors.  It was a very quick but fun trip, we took the bus to Dublin on Tuesday and only had one day there which we successfully spent in the Guinness Factory.  It is a very cool tour and an even cooler building and I would recommend that anyone who is in Dublin should take the trip.  The Gravity bar on the very top of the building has a 360° view of the city.  The bustling lifestyle of Dublin took us by surprise since we have been living quite rurally for the past two months, but the change was a good one.  We took the train back on Thursday and had a blast playing Go Fish and Charades. 

Halloween.  For some reason the creative juices were pulsing on Halloween, inspired by my excursion to the Guinness Factory.  I was a pint of Guinness.  If I say so myself, it was pretty awesome! I wore a black dress with Guinness in paper letters across my chest, I painted my shoulders white and put baby powder in my hair.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get a free drink out of the costume.  I saw some pretty sweet costumes than night: a mime, one-foot Willy (you can imagine!), a pimp, a dead doll, a playboy bunny, a zombie, Ché, a sexy secretary (the one and only Elizabeth), a robber, a CSI agent, and many, many more. 

Now I am in my PJs, sitting on my kitchen table, looking out my window at the Peak, listening to good music and watching the surfers master their skills.  I don’t know how it gets much better than that! 

Rewards

Tuesday, we were able to shadow and help out a group of primary school children who were coming to the DAC.  There were 106 of them from two schools, one in Northern Ireland and one in the Republic.  They were split into groups with one head instructor and about 3 of us.  My favorite part about that day was when a young girl needed to change into sweatpants and so she asked my help, taking her to the changing rooms.  She proceeded to tell me all about her life and that her dog was in the vet and how worried she was about him.  I was so amazed at this little girl’s frankness and the trust she put in me, I will always admire the truthfulness of children. 

This week was a wake-up call that all of us in the course need to step up and start to study for our assessments in December.  We have been getting quizzed at the end of each day, and so far it has been rather pathetic, so this weekend and for the rest of our time here we will be studying and getting ready for our assessments.  Every Wednesday we go to a freezing ocean pool to work on our beach lifeguarding skills.  It is a very cold day, but also a very rewarding day; we take turns saving each other and every time we come back from the pool, I feel a real sense of accomplishment.  To warm up, this week we played a game of water polo, and the only rule was that there were no rules; we had so much fun basically just tackling each other to get the ball anyway possible (my team won by the way!).  I laughed a lot this week, whether with the children or at my classmates in a game we were playing.  This experience is ending up meaning so much to me, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything!

Life Saving

I knew coming here that we would be training to be lifegaurds, beach life gaurds to be spesific. I didn’t think that the “beach” part would make any difference, boy was I wrong.

To be a beach life gaurd you must have all the life gaurd training, including: First aid training, be able to swim and being able to jump in, tow someone out and then administer CPR. Now to be a beach life gaurd you have to add a lot of training in open water. which means wet suits and frezzing cold, relentless waves that just wont leave you alone.

You also need to be able to swim out with a surf board/peterson tube/back board and use it to save someone. we are also getting trained in all the releses so that when a drowning person grabs hold of you the only floting object around, you can esscape and not drown.

so thats what we did this week we swam and surfed, we towed and released and we ran up and down the beach in and out of the water with surf boards while yelling to eachother.

oh and a ray swam under my surf board while we were out!

Strive to Inspire

I tried to put this up last week, but apparently my computer hates me and it didn’t make it!

 

Reflecting back on the past week, I realize that if all the weeks are half as eventful as this one, I will have quite an adventure over here.  Monday morning started out great, until Elizabeth and I walked into the orange room, filled with our fellow DACers, only to realize we were approximately fifteen minutes late.  Of course we have tons of people we could blame, but the plain truth is that we were late. It isn’t too pleasant to miss the one and only name game and look around a room and not know a single person’s name.  You will be happy to know that I now could name about half to ¾ of them.  We started out doing low ropes and the main event to me was that the bottom of my pants got absolutely soaked with nasty mud and God knows what else…  It was great to get to know other people and get a sense of what they were like.  Just to give you a sense, they are all great!  After an hour for lunch, we went surfing!  I managed to catch about 3.5 waves, yet crashed and tumbled on the other million that I attempted.  Besides a few bumps on the head and a few bruises, it went very well and was superbly fun!

Tuesday we went straight to the rock wall and channeled Spiderman.  We have yet to do the high ropes but I am sure they will be just as great!  We had to do the belaying as well and it was fun to make people stop half way down the wall and give them a major wedgie!  A big part of our course is First Aid and Beach Lifeguard theory, so in the afternoon we had our first lecture on First Aid and learned a lot of important things, just about saving people etc… 

Wednesday was interesting because we had to do a 400m swim in under 8 minutes. We were in a hotel pool so that meant 33 lengths of the pool.  I would say that the majority of my fellow course-mates did not manage to get it; I’m glad that I did make it so that I don’t have to do the swim again until December.  When 20 people are doing a swim like that, there is a lot of spare time to just sit in the Jacuzzi and chat, which is exactly what we did!  They had a steam room which really helped my cold out a lot (yes, I am still sick L).  After lunch we had a Beach Lifeguard lecture which let us know all about the duties and responsibilities of a Beach Lifeguard and how fit they all are. 

Thursday we went Kayaking and Canoeing which was great craic! We paddled around some little islands in quite a large lake which spans all the way from the UK to Ireland! It really isn’t that amazing, but it is very cool, in the way that Niagara Falls is; you can see another country from where you stand! Then in the afternoon, after a quick jaunt to KFC to get some kids lunch, we had another lecture; this time we had the manikins out and got to practice CPR on them, which was really funny!

Overall, everyone is really nice and fantastic.  The Irish welcome is legendary, but it is more than anything I had ever imagined.  It is amazing how good it feels to have people really want to know how you are getting on and want to show you around their country.  Every morning we look out our window and see the pro surfers catching waves at 8am.  It is so inspiring to see someone command a wave and ride it like there is no tomorrow.  Perhaps someday I will be able to inspire such emotion.

Perseverance

Look out the window.  What do you see?  I see driving, cold rain and hail, stormy seas and utter uncomfortableness and I am going swimming in it.  A normal, sane person would take one look and turn around and go back to sleep in their warm, safe bed; I take a deep breath and leap.  As we are running down to the ocean pool in wet suits, I try not to think about what I am about to do and just focus on the run, but in the back of my mind I am thinking “what am I doing? It is freezing!”  After a quick warm up swim, the wet suit starts doing its job and I look up to see a rainbow stretched across the sky.  I don’t know whether it was my lack of oxygen or my sheer desperation to find beauty in the cold, but it was the most beautiful rainbow I have ever seen: it looked like God had decided that today He would make a rainbow with all the colors of an artist’s palate and leave the viewers breathless (literally).  Then suddenly the wind picked up and the hail began to harass our faces and the cold set in.  My lungs began to freeze and I started losing motion in my limbs.  My face felt like marble and pretending to be a drowning casualty being saved by a training lifeguard wasn’t helping.  After a shower and lunch I felt something that I didn’t necessarily expect to feel: pride.  I was proud that I wasn’t scared off by the wind and rain, but that I actually stepped out of my comfort zone and did it anyway.

The whole time I have been here, I have been outside my comfort zone and loving it!  I have learned so much about myself and now I feel that I can do anything I set my mind to, and plus, I am having the time of my life.  Everyday is a new opportunity to learn something about how to live and have a new adventure.  What have you done today?

 

Home, sports and rasing our drinks to a new year!

we have made our appartment a home, which was much needed. we cleaned everything, got candles, burned essential oils, hung up posters and of course cooked. cooking for me brings everything into focus, here we are in another country, living by ourselves thousands of miles from home for the first time, cooking and somehow its all worked out. We are alive and well (besides allies slight cold), eating fantastic food, including oreos,and having so much fun.

Surfing-

Now I am not a surfer, I have never been on a surf board and didnt think untill recenly, that i ever would. We learned the basics, how to’s and how dont’s and then we were let free on to the unsuspecting  ocean. not that the ocean minded that much. you have never been beaten untill you have been beaten by the ocean again and again and again.  If being hit by a giant salt-watery wave isnt enough to enflick pain, you have a giant board there with you. I have some wonderfully colored brusing from my new friend Surf board. eventually we will all get a hang of it, it was fun in the end and will continue to be i suspect. 

 

Rock Climbing-

this one I have done and enjoyed plenty more then the activities of the before mentioned sport. we hope to continue with rock climing not just at the centre but out in the surounding mountains. we also hope to do some rope courses here as well.

Kayaking-

 Kayaking was a blast, each day seams to get better and better in fun value. we kayaked on a loch which i know is simply a lake but it seems so much more fun, cultural and timely to call them lochs. sometimes i feel as if im in a different time with words such as, Ye for all of you, trolley, loch ect. I love the language usage here.

So we have come to the end of our first week. so far all has gone decently minus mold and allies head cold. Ireland is proving to be as beautiful as imagined and the towns folk are absolutly wonderful.as we enter this weekend we stumble apon my birthday, which just gives every Irish person I know yet another exuse to drink, but heyits the culture, cheers!

much love to all back home and all of those who have stumbled on our blog, thanks. and thanks to all for the comments its nice to know someone out there is reading.

love

Guiness

There is no doubt about it, Guiness here is about forty times better than back home.  I had my first pint last night and it didn’t disapoint.  Nobody panic I am not going to get out of control, seeing as I woke up this morning with swolen glands and a stuffy nose.  We met some very interesting people last night… some are doing our program and some are just locals.  One man we met had been kicked out of the States and Mexico; he had some stories!  We went to another pub and listened to a great band, Jaded Sun.  The short walk home was refreshing after the hot and sweat of the pub and it also gave us a chance to get out hearing back!

To our great relief the shower is very easy to use and nice and hot!  The pressure is not very high, but the temperature and simpleness of it makes up for any other problems we might face!  The heaters were on when we got home at around 1:30 in the morning, but alas they weren’t working again in the morning. 

I have attached some pictures of our view and humble abode, enjoy!

Ireland

We have made it to Ireland! yayayay! After a very long plane ride (actual time unknown we couldnt figure it out, somewhere between 6-7 hours), and a 3 hour drive we finally made it to Bundoran which is in county Donegal, our finall destination.

After a nap and some food it was already mid-afternoon so we explored Bundoran. It is a rather small fishing town bordered by Donegal bay and “mountains” which we consider to be mear foot hills. everything is green, which is expected, but man is it green! the closer you get to the ocean the more windswept the grass becomes which is wonderful.

the big thing here is surfing, some of the best in Ireland in fact. there are beautiful white beaches, rocks, green grass, ect. our apartment looks directly out onto the beach which is about a 2 min walk.

the people are wonderful, or at lest the five we actually know are. this weekend there is a giant music festival in town so we will hopefully meet a few more people.

 

 

Things to note if you ever travel here:

They slam doors like no tantrum-throwing-child ever could. Its not that they are all really angry or anything, tis just that the doors slam shut, if they arnt proped or held open they close, loudly. this we discovered at one this morning when the pub/barers came in.

You can get everything here that you can get at home, yes everything. we went shopping , found everything we could need, including mangos which I didnt expect to see.

They do drive on the other side of the road, which is fine but this does effect the whole jay-walking thing that we are all so good at, which way do you look first. We also have the question of: if the cars are on the other side of the road does this reflect on walking too. If you are to pass someone on the street which side to you pass on? It doesnt seem to the that big of a deal but we had a few close run ins at the beach this morning.

to get a “ride” is to get a “lift”. to get a ride is a compleatly different thing then getting a lift in someones car from say the ariport home.

when people ask you for the “crack” they do not in fact want drugs. tis just a question like whats up? or happening.-whats the crack?

All outlets and electronics can and most of the time are turned off. this lends some problems to figuring out which outlet/electric swich turns on the frig, washer or stove top.

Hello world!

Allie and I, Elizabeth will be traveling to the wonderful Ireland. there we shall experience the culture, rock climb, kayak and surf (yes surf! in the north atlantic, freezing? yes there will be wetsuits and still some freezing.) We are both exited for this, the next three months of our lives, for the lessons and adventures that we shall find in Ireland.

Neither one of us has departed from are homes here in beautiful Boulder Colorado,  but we shall within the upcoming weeks. there will be more posts when we have actually started our ventures but until then this is all.